Neil Cavuto Deliberately Pit Donald Trump Against Dick Cheney

Just as Bill O’Reilly did with Christine O’Donnell, Neil Cavuto set up Dick Cheney for criticism and pretended otherwise. Cavuto conducted a fairly softball interview with Cheney yesterday (9/13/11) and then followed it up with an interview with someone he knew would be critical – Donald Trump. It’s a neat trick Fox has of making sure a conservative guest gets skewered without getting the host’s hands dirty, so to speak. Or giving the guest an opportunity to respond.

As Trump said himself, he’s been very publicly critical of Cheney. So his choice for analysis of Cheney's interview guaranteed a negative response.

Cavuto began the segment with Trump by playing a clip in which Cheney was asked, "What do you think of Donald Trump by the way?" After saying he didn’t know Trump, Cheney quickly agreed Trump is “pretty blunt.”

Cavuto pressed Cheney to talk about Trump, saying that he believes, "We've built a history, the Republican and Democrat administrations, kowtowing to the Chinese, kowtowing to OPEC, kowtowing to Saudi sheiks and princes, and he says that's got to stop or our days are done as country."

"I don't know that I look to Donald Trump for leadership,” Cheney replied. “But I don't have any reason to believe he's got more capability in that area than some others do. He's talked about running for President. He's never quite gotten up to the starting gate."

Then, when he got Trump on the phone afterward, Cavuto blatantly prodded for criticism, saying, "Donald, I think he dissed you."

Trump said, "I'm not surprised… I was very strong on I didn't like what he said in his book. I didn't like the way he spoke about people. I've never been a huge fan of Bush, but I didn't like the fact that essentially he was calling our president, President Bush a liar… I don't like people that work for somebody else and then write books about them."

Cavuto said, "The Vice President wasn't calling President Bush a liar."

"He was because his recollection was on different things was much different than Bush’s,” Trump responded. “Wouldn't you say that's the same thing?"

"That's not calling someone a liar,” Cavuto said. But then he added sympathetically, “I know what you mean."

Trump continued, "I'm not a fan of Dick Cheney. I'm not a fan of his Vice Presidency. I think he did a poor job to put it mildly."

Cavuto prodded further. "He is saying effectively you can't conduct foreign policy effectively demeaning the people with whom you have to do business. In this case China or in this case OPEC… You say… that's exactly what we have to do."

"China's laughing at us,” Trump said. “They think we're a bunch of very stupid people… We make so many of our products over there, they get away with manipulating their currency and they’re taking our jobs."

Cavuto tried to up the ante of hostility. "If you bumped into Dick Cheney today, what would you say to him?"

But Trump obviously wasn’t interested in starting or perpetuating the kind of feud Cavuto was obviously hoping for. Trump said, "I wouldn’t say much, I mean to be honest with you. I’d love not to bump in. But if I bumped in, I'd shake his hand, say hello, and then hit the road, but I'm not a fan. I think what he did with the country wasn't good, and I think his book was disgraceful."